Neither Sapir nor Whorf ever ..

Research on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis looks for ways in whichlanguage influences perception and thought. But language is notthe only way that a culture can influence cognition. Otherresearch looks for cultural differences in language and perception thatare not necessarily mediated by language. For example, there isresearch suggesting that cognition can be affected by methods ofsubsistence or social values.

The term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" is ..

Ask A Linguist FAQ: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The abandonment of the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that the structure of a language determined our conceptualization of the world, led to a period in which folk categories and taxonomies and their organization became a distinct specialism.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis | Cognitive Linguistics | …

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language, particularly names, powerfully shape human reality and worldviews. Under this hypothesis, the terminology that we use to refer to particular groups influences our perception of those groups. Insensitive or exclusive language can contribute to negative perceptions of group members, which erodes our ability to perceive their dignity and worth. There is some evidence to support this hypothesis; for instance, one study showed that when children were read a story that used the pronoun "he" to mean both he and she, the children were more likely to rate men as more competent at the job discussed in the story.

we were introduced to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of ..

These kinds of findings are now plentiful, but the Sapir-WhorfHypothesis has not gone unchallenged (for a review, see Bloom and Keil2001). For example, Li and Gleitman (2002) showed that Tzetalspeakers can reproduce object arrays using relative reference framesin a simplified version of the experiments performed by Pederson etal. (1998) (see Levinson et al. 2002 for a reply). Frank et al.(2008) found that Pirahã could match large quantities withaccuracy, but failed to do so when they relied on memory. Suchexperimental critiques suggest that Sapir-Whorf effects are fragile,and may be hard to show under certain conditions, but they alsoconfirm that language plays a role in encoding information, andcognitive differences arise when memory is involved. Studies on colorperception and color comparison suggest that the effects are notlimited to memory, and Boroditsky's study of gendered pronouns suggestthat language can have an enduring impact on how we think aboutfamiliar categories.

about the Whorfian hypothesis was by its opponents

Writing a college essay that stands out The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Daniel Chandler Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company McLuhan, M (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill.

proponent of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

In , the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that a language's grammatical categories control its speakers' possible thoughts. While few support the hypothesis in its strong form, many linguists accept a more moderate version, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use. In its strong form, the hypothesis states that, for example, "" promotes sexist thought.

Opponents to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argue that a.

Well before Quine and Davidson were debating the incommensurability ofmeanings, linguists had been exploring similar ideas. EdwardSapir (1929), a student of Boaz, had proposed two interrelated theses:linguistic determinism according to which language influences the waypeople think, and linguistic variation, according to which languageshave profound differences in syntax and semantics (these terms are notSapir's, but exist in the literature). Together, these twotheses entail linguistic relativity: the thesis that speakers ofdifferent languages differ in how they perceive and think in virtue ofspeaking different languages. Sapir's student, BenjaminWhorf (1956), speculated that languages encode fundamentally different“logics,” which become so habitual to language users thatthey seem natural, resulting in fundamentally different ways ofunderstanding the world. For example, Whorf speculates thatspeakers of Hopi are anti-realists about time, since tense in thatlanguage is expressed using epistemic modals, which describe events asrecalled, reported, or anticipated, in lieu of past, present, orfuture. Sapir and Whorf's relativism about language has come tobe known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. These two have beencriticized for offering insufficient support. They had limitedknowledge of the languages they discuss, and throughout theirdiscussions, they infer cognitive differences directly from linguisticdifferences rather than testing whether language causes (or evencorrelates) with difference in thought.

(Compare the anthropological Sapir–Whorf hypothesis)

Even color perception, which was once regarded as immune toSapir-Whorf effects may be influenced by language. Kay and Kempton(1994) found that speaker Tarahumara, a language that does notdistinguish green and blue, were more accurate than English speakersat rating the similarity of color pairs within the blue-green range(see also Roberson et al. 2000). Winawer et al. (2007) found thatspeakers of Russian, which has separate lexemes for light blue anddarker blues, show categorical perception effects for light blue, notfound in English speakers. In categorical perception, differencesbetween stimuli that cross a categorical boundary are perceived asgreater than equal differences within a category. For Russianspeakers, a light and medium blue may look more different than a lightand dark blue, even if two pairs are equidistant in colorspace.

has been generally known as “the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.”

Anyway, why “Sapir-Katz”? Partly for the symmetrical displacement of “Sapir-Whorf,” but that is only possible because Edward Sapir did, in fact, have a more subtle understanding of the relations between language, thought and culture than Whorf and has helped to suggest, for me, the possibility that the construction, through various means, of idiomatic shifts within the language provide new pathways for thought and culture. But that’s enough for now.